Kusunda

Seventy-five-year-old Gyani Maiyi Sen is the only native fluent speaker of Kusunda in the world, and linguists are rushing to record the unique language. Around the globe languages are dying rapidly as more and more people are learning global languages instead of maintaining their native tongues. Kusunda, a unique language of Nepal, is another of these dying languages.

Linguists, like biologists, have a scale to measure how endangered a language is. A language is considered “safe” if it will be spoken by children in 100 years. A language is classified as “endangered” when it is unlikely that children will speak it in 100 years. However, Kusunda is more vulnerable than that. It is technically a “moribund” language, which means that no children are currently learning it. When the last native speakers die, a language officially becomes extinct.
Kusunda is unique not only because it is moribund, but it is also a language isolate. Like Basque, Kusunda is not related to any other spoken language. Linguists are rushing to Nepal to record Sen speaking and describing Kusunda. The language does not have an alphabet, though, which makes this task difficult. Some linguists have speculated that Kusunda may be related to Indo-Pacific languages spoken in the Pacific Islands, but there is no definitive correlation.
Recently linguists determined that an endangered language spoken in Siberia is related to languages spoken by Native American groups. Learn its full history here.

16 Responses to Kusunda

While languages are dying out, certain ancient arts could be on the endangered list too. For example, Tuvan throat singing has been around for ages, but for how long as younger people opt for new forms of art and communication.

I think it was last year someone shared this video on Facebook of a young guy who went to study abroad and learned some of the styles of this singing. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear a high-pitched melody coming out at the same time as the deep tone.

The world was created with one language. As men grew evil and collaborated in their evil, God confused their languages into multiple ones and spread them out so as to keep them apart. The origin of language is one of those things that continue to entirely confound scientists and those deluded by evolutionary philosophy, though ever more studies more and more lean on the idea that the world’s languages arose from one common one and ‘evolved’ further.

It was on Pentecost that God once again set to reunite mankind when the Holy Spirit came down like fire from heaven (the wording is similar to the event at Babel) and the Apostles spoke in tongues and every other man could hear them speak in their own native tongue simultaneously! This was the signal that God wishes to reunite mankind on the right path to reach the heavens through His Church.

@teomatteo: It doesn’t say that it’s the only language she speaks. ;) Many people can speak more than just their native language (and more of us probably should – I can probably still pass as proficient in French, but I used to be much better. I envy those who grew up learning multiple languages because acquiring new ones even after adulthood seems to be easier for them than for those of us who started in adolescence or even later elementary years – I started French in fifth grade. I know I would like to learn at least some Spanish, and Latin would have its uses, as well…)

Even though it’s a natural process, I do feel sad that this language will, in all likelihood, completely die out with this woman. Languages are fascinating things and there is a bit of knowledge that will be irretrievable once fluency in her language is gone.

Cornish died but has been re-introduced. There is some evidence that the language lasted into the 20th century, when it was supposedly died out in the 18th century, as a real communal spoken language. Here is a transcript of a letter in Cornish, written in long-hand, of course.

1. I’m sixty-five years old.
2. I’m a poor fisherman.
3. I learnt Cornish when I was a boy.
4. I was at sea with my father and five more men in a fishing boat.
5. I hardly heard a single word of English in the boat for a week at a time.
6. I’ve never seen a Cornish book.
7. I learnt Cornish going to sea with the old fellows.
8. There’s no more than four or five in our village who can talk Cornish now,
9. old folk eighty years old.
10. Cornish had been entirely forgotten by the young.

Supertradmum,
Cornish is related to Gaelic, and you can actually pick out cognates (bloed for bliadhna, counting in twenties, Sowsnek for Sassenach). It’s like knowing German and listening to Plattdeutsch.
asperges,
Adam and Eve spoke Gaelic. Ask any Highlander.

I don’t think I”m going to throw a party to celebrate the end of a language, but neither do I intend to stage a funeral. I’ve heard about the “death of a language” a few times before. I’ve never truthfully understood why anyone besides linguists would care very much. I’ve heard from multiculturalists that we Americans should speak more than one language.

Reasons:
1.
2.
3. They say so.

I’m well aware that many groups of Europeans may speak five languages or more. Good for them. I’ve never heard why that’s important to me. We’ve done quite nicely with English for a few centuries now.
Also, given that these efforts never mention Latin as a language we ought to learn, I’ve long considered their general attitude..questionable.

BTW, for the record, I”m sure the crack about Adam and Latin, was just that, but Latin descriptions of things, at least with the more or less current methods, didn’t begin until at least 1700.

Starting to think about BACK TO SCHOOL items? Even text books? When you shop…

... through Amazon, please, come here first? Enter Amazon through my search box. I'll then get a small percentage of everything you buy. (Pssst - Can't see the search box? Turn off your "ad-blocker" for this site!)

Search Fr. Z’s Blog

Search for:

"In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. ... If all Catholics are obliged to oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are obliged to do so in a particular way, in keeping with their responsibility as politicians." CDF 2003 and HERE

Support them with prayer and fasting.

CLICK and say your Daily Offering!

Leave Voice Mail for Fr. Z

Nota bene: I do not answer these numbers or this Skype address. You won't get me "live". I check for messages regularly.

WDTPRS

020 8133 4535

651-447-6265

Let us pray…

Grant unto thy Church, we beseech
Thee, O merciful God, that She, being
gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may
be in no wise troubled by attack from her
foes.
O God, who by sin art offended and by
penance pacified, mercifully regard the
prayers of Thy people making supplication
unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of
Thine anger which we deserve for our sins.
Almighty and Everlasting God, in
whose Hand are the power and the
government of every realm: look down upon
and help the Christian people that the heathen
nations who trust in the fierceness of their
own might may be crushed by the power of
thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ,
Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee
in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world
without end. R. Amen.

Yes, Fr. Z is taking ads…

... and there will be nearly 1,000,000 page loads this month.

Traditional Catholic? Are you single? Don’t want to be? CLICK!

Help Monks in Wyoming, Fr. Z, and get great coffee too!

And they have tea too!

Because you don’t know when you are going to need to move fast or get along without the supermarket…

Great gift for newly ordained priests. Folding altar card set for the Traditional Latin Mass.

And check out the stunning FULL SIZE altar cards HERE. I have a set on my altar.

New Gregorian Chant CD by the Benedictines of Norcia!

Wyoming Catholic College!

A great place in Rome…

Identity theft is a serious problem that you do NOT want to have. I use Lifelock.

And for your cybersecurity…

My wish lists

Main Wishlist Kindle WishlistAudio WishlistHam Radio ListNEW

Food For Thought

“The legalization of the termination of pregnancy is none other than the authorization given to an adult, with the approval of an established law, to take the lives of children yet unborn and thus incapable of defending themselves. It is difficult to imagine a more unjust situation, and it is very difficult to speak of obsession in a matter such as this, where we are dealing with a fundamental imperative of every good conscience — the defense of the right to life of an innocent and defenseless human being.”

- St. John Paul II

A bit more food for thought…

“Only one sin is nowadays severely punished: the attentive observance of the traditions of our Fathers. For that reason the good ones are thrown out of their places and brought to the desert.”

For your consideration…

"One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting."

- C.S. Lewis

More food for thought:

“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”

Check out the Cardinal Newman Society feed!

Be a “Zed-Head”!

Fr. Z’s stuff is everywhere

More food for thought…

"All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void."

- Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 176

Even More Food For Thought

"Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties:
1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.
2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests."

To set up a recurring, monthly donation (even a small one) go to the bottom of this blog and look for the drop down menu! Some donations also come through Chase/Manhattan (if you don't like PayPal).

I remember benefactors in my prayers and periodically say Mass for your intention.

Additional Food For Thought

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Fathers, you don’t know who might show up! It could be a “big fish” of one sort or other…

What people say…

"Father John Zuhlsdorf is a crank"
"Father Zuhlsdorf drives me crazy"
"the hate-filled Father John Zuhlsford" [sic]
"Father John Zuhlsdorf, the right wing priest who has a penchant for referring to NCR as the 'fishwrap'"

Help the Sisters. They have a building project. Get great soap (gifts, etc.) while helping REAL nuns!

Food For Thought

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. . . . Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

Archives

ENTRY CALENDAR

Do you use my blog often? Is it helpful to you?

If so, please consider subscribing to send a monthly donation. That way I have steady income I can plan on, and you wind up regularly on my list of benefactors for whom I pray and for whom I periodically say Holy Mass.